


Hello, Aliens

by tsukiakari



Series: Insomnia [2]
Category: Nancy Drew (Video Games), Nancy Drew – HER Interactive (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukiakari/pseuds/tsukiakari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before morning comes and Thornton Hall is razed, Wade gets a phone call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello, Aliens

Her number's stored there in his phone now, and he still remembers the innocently perky tone in that girl's voice as she read off the digits to him. Of course she wouldn't understand, not a bit. She was too busy with more important things, with Jessie and wandering Charlotte and the dizzy high of carbon monoxide, to care about the emptiness of his life. She'd probably never felt the desperation, and if she had, it would've been fleeting, as transient as anything else at eighteen.

The girl had been in touch with her, though. He wonders momentarily if they'd kept talking about him, or if she'd kept the facts to herself without sharing them. With his phone a silent presence in his jacket pocket, the very thought feels unimportant.

Above him, the stars are brilliant, tiny firefly sparks embedded in the sky like shards of crystal. It's bound to be his last time on the island before Harper gets her way, before everything's ripped to the ground and borne away. Oddly enough, thinking of the impending morning is a small comfort - for all that the hall is alive and content in his memories, its charred remains deserve burial now, just like the old cottage, now nothing more than ruins that loom dusky before him in the deep blue twilight.

He wanders toward them, as the autumn chill sweeps by him in a momentary breeze, rustling the ivy and moaning through the open doorway. For a moment he thinks of stepping into the building, but the stairs look far too unstable, and the idea of being indoors prickles at him uncomfortably.

The water in the dead fountain sways, sparkling a bit under the stars, with dead leaves blotting out the light here and there. He leans on one of those gaudy carved fish and lets his thoughts slip back to her, as much as it all aches in his chest within moments.

He still doesn't know if she would have really come to the island, and that's what lingers in his mind, grating subtly on his nerves. Her arrival had been the one bright spot of hope in every endless, hopeless night. The idea that she really is a coward, that she will never come back, hurts more than the leaving did.

His phone rings.

His first thought is of Jessie and her offer, and he sighs, fishing his phone from his pocket and squinting through the screen's glare. One word slowly blurs into focus: "Private", with no avatar of Jessie above it like he expected.

The buzzing of the phone continues. He taps the screen just to shut it up, lifting the phone to his ear. "Hello?" The silence falls to pieces under the sound of his voice, too loud even to himself.

Static crackles back over the line, underlaid by quiet breathing. Moments go by, and he hears nothing more.

"Hello? Anybody there?" Something makes a chill flicker down his spine, the same something that keeps him from hanging up. Another breeze creeps through, and the bushes rustle softly.

"...Wade?"

He knows the voice and it brings back a torrent of memories, and this time he leans on the carved fish out of necessity. With that one word, it's as though she's right in front of him, the same heavy-lashed eyes, the same deep blond hair, the same stubborn sulky mouth and overwhelming confidence and curiosity.

For a moment the weight is too heavy and he can't think straight. The cold stone slips out from under his fingers. His mind all but rejects the thought that she's on the other end of the line, with her breath held in waiting for his answer. It can't be real.

But like all dreams it still can't stay the same forever. Reality breaks through in sharp cold, like an electric shock and a hundred times more bracing. "Savannah?" He forces her name out past the lump in his throat.

"Yeah, it's me." She answers almost immediately, a studied note of carelessness in her voice, with relief hesitating just behind. "Listen, I..."

For an instant her voice seems to break, then she picks up the threads of the sentence again with nary a pause, rushing on almost eagerly. "I know what you must be thinking, and I'm sorry...just wanted to say that if you'd ever want to come up here for a visit, you're more than welcome. Though, of course -"

"Savannah." He realizes he's closed his eyes, and hears the low hum of the wind behind him. Something, comfort or naive happiness, makes him take a deep breath of the chilly air. At the moment he doesn't even care if morning comes and the whole island sinks into the sea. His family, his past, it's all but gone.

"Listen, you don't need to apologize," he says, before she can start again. "Just..." Again the words get stuck in his throat and it takes all his will to speak them. "Just give me your address and I'll be there."

When he hangs up the phone, the ruined spectacle around him holds no charm anymore, no more interest than the cemetery did in the end, or his old jail cell.

He looks back at the ruins, the last vestiges of death. Nothing's left anymore to hold him here - it's a thought powerful enough to give him pause, even as he's trying to burn her voice into his memory again so that it never vanishes. Nothing's left anymore to hold him here.

The morning stars are starting to fade into view when he leaves.


End file.
